Main task - pre production - Film Noir - Research.

It's not just a genre, its a combination of two other genres.

Conventions
-Black and white.
-Good and bad charcters.
-Low key lighting.
-Costumes (Glamours dresses, 3-piece-suit, hats)
-No un-beautiful people.
-Glamours.
-Smoking.
-Opening titles of the first minute.
-Narrative.
-Cross dissolve.
-Fade to black.
-Blurry (makes women sexy).
-Strong female character (femme fatale/sexuality).
-Investigation hero.
-Flash back.

Film noir is a cinematic term and used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime drama's.
It's French for "Black film".
Hollywood's classic film noir period is genrally regarded as streatching from the early 1940's to the late 1950's.

The primary moods of film noir
-Melancholy.
-Alienation.
-Bleakness.
-Disillusionment.
-Disenchantment.
-Perssimism.
-Ambiguity.
-Moral curruption.
-Evil.
-Guilt.
-Desperation.
-Paranoia.

The films themselves, often shot in gloomy grays, blacks and whites, thematically showed the dark and inhuman side of human nature. With cynicsm and doomed love, they would also emphasise the brutal, unhealthy, shadowy dark and sadastic sides of the human experience.

Characters
Characters are driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes.

Settings
Often places such as:
Interior...
-Low-key,single-source light.
-Venetian - blinded windows and rooms.
-Dark, claustrophobic, gloomy appearences.
Exterior...
-Night scenes.
-Deep shadows.
-Wet asphalt.
-Dark alleyways.
-Rain sleaked/main streets.
-Flashing neon lights.
-Low-key lighting.

Female roles
There are two types in film noir; decitful, reliable, trustworthy and loving women OR femmes fatales:

-Mysterious.
-Duplicitous.
-Double-crossing.
-Gorgeous.
-Unloving.
-Predatory.
-Tough-sweet.
-Unreliable.
-Irresponsible.
-Manipulate.
-Desprate.